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An anonymous reader writes "When President George Bush visits Sydney, Australia for the APEC Summit in September, all cell phone calls within the radius of a football field will be suppressed. The president's motorcade will be shadowed by a helicopter equipped with signal-jamming equipment. Terrorists have used mobile phones to detonate remote-controlled bombs in Iraq and elsewhere in the world." There are other ways to detonate explosives remotely. Doesn't seem like the smartest thing to let potential enemies know of such plans in advance.

I'm not likely to be a terrorist soon, but don't these people know what REDUNDANT control's are?

That said, I have no doubts that said helicopter will also take out 802.11 signals because only a really dumb team would jam only mobile signals. As far as I am concerned the only reason these plans have been "leaked" is because people would otherwise be calling their Telco going "WTF MY PHONE DROPPED OUT".

So yeah, ten points for a great idea, but try and think like a terrorist, and then how would you defend against that. I'm happy enough to bash the administration as much as the next guy (personally I think Howard [aussie PM] is a dick, but better than the alternatives), but sometimes we need to step back from the abuse and look at what we're really talking about...

So yeah, ten points for a great idea, but try and think like a terrorist, and then how would you defend against that.

That should be obvious: Trigger the bomb by the jamming signal. As soon as the mobile phone doesn't find a network any more, the bomb is triggered. Additional call triggering can be used in case there just happens to be no jamming (in which case calling the phone would obviously work).

Silly Secret Service, don't you know suicide bombers are for kids? When they realize they can't do it remotely, someone will "martyr" themselves to get the job done. That's the insidiousness of Islamic fascists.

That said, doing something is better than doing nothing. A lot of the complaints here seem to be along the lines of "why lock my car door when someone can steal my stereo by breaking the window anyway?"

It just means you'll be limiting your opponents to only very serious players instead of wannabes.

That said, doing something is better than doing nothing. A lot of the complaints here seem to be along the lines of "why lock my car door when someone can steal my stereo by breaking the window anyway?"

There are at least two legitimate concerns:

1) Various fairly obvious terrorist responses to these counter-measures will greatly increase the danger to bystanders without materially reducing the risk to the President.

2) There is some suspicion that this has more to do with making it harder for legitimate democratic protesters to co-ordinate their actions than it does with preventing terrorism.

Whether either of those things is sufficient to trump the needs of presidential security is a matter for debate, unlike the nearly-zero-cost behaviour of locking your car doors to protect your stereo. There is a point where people are going to say, "Enough! We've had it with all the intrusions into our daily lives in the name of counter-terrorist activity. I come from a society that has always valued liberty over security, and this is more than I am willing to give up."

Trigger the bomb to explode not on the *presence* of a jamming signal, but on the *weakening of the running average* of the signal strength (i.e., when the chopper is moving away from you). Sure, there are countermeasures to that, but you'd need to know that they're needed.Other options would include pressure + presence of jamming signal, noise + presence of jamming signal, motion detector tripped + presence of jamming signal, IR sensor tripped + presence of jamming signal, etc. The jamming signal could s

So yeah, ten points for a great idea, but try and think like a terrorist, and then how would you defend against that.

<obligatory>

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” — George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., 5 August 2004

That said, I have no doubts that said helicopter will also take out 802.11 signals because only a really dumb team would jam only mobile signals.

On the other hand, there's a lot of spectrum, and if you are planning an assassination, local rules about "assigned frequencies" and "allowable broadcast power" really aren't a concern for the bad guys. An pro-am radio transmitter, tone generator, and a high-powered parabolic antenna (an old satellite dish?) shouldn't add more than $5k (at worst) to the cost of

And missionaries. Oh, and capitalists who sailed halfway around the world to make a fortune exploiting your country's natives, taking its natural resources, and killing off your local species one by one.

You know, you Aussies and us Americans have a lot of history in common;)

But they were hitting a stationary target. In order to get the timing right to hit a moving motorcade they would have to be the luckiest people in the world. Much easier to have someone sitting a block or two away and watching for when the president's car is next to the trashcan or car or whatever they planted the bomb in.

"When President George Bush visits Sydney, Australia for the APEC Summit in September, all dissent within the radius of a 5km of the visiting dignitary will be suppressed with immediate lethal force. During the days of the visit, curfew will begin one hour earlier and last one hour longer.Kids! Parents! Let's give Mr. Bush a cheery welcome to Australia! Additional chocolate rations have been approved for minors under the age of 16 wishing to cheer President Bush, these will be available after each event. Ad

You're assuming liberals (true liberals, anyway) think democrats are liberal. Not even close. Is there even a single liberal who's been elected in the last 30 years? Heck, has there been a true CONSERVATIVE either?

In my humble opinion, no. We've only had Opportunists. Both parties favor large cash donations from large groups.

Doing the right thing, at this point, will require saying unpopular things, making unpopular decisions, acting out of principle, and self-sacrifice. Honestly, I don't expect that from anyone in Washington.

And on one other note, some people may bash Bush not because he's a Republican, but because he's a HORRIBLE president. Not to mention the only one. Being in the spotlight tends to draw attention from all sides.

(And yes, his being a "horrible" president is an opinion, but I base that opinion based on the facts that he started an unnecessary war, LIED intentionally to start that war, gave people awards for messing up that war, has refered to the Constitution as "just a piece of paper," demonstrated ineptitude to lead under emergencies [See: Initial reaction to 9/11, Katrina], unwillingness to try new methods, or even just give up old ones when they don't work, or even ADMIT that his methods don't work [HOW many times have we heard "we're making progress" in Iraq?], and, intentional or not, the utter genocide of innocent English words. And yes, in nearly every instance listed, he is not FULLY to blame, but he certainly shares credit.)

It's hard to say who deserves who. Bad politicians make the people worse (destroy public education, for example), and bad people create bad politicians (by voting them in). It's a chicken and egg kind of thing, except the chicken ends up friend and the egg becomes an omelet.Hopefully, by which I mean "Never gonna happen, but," a good politician could do those things a better way. For example, one of the biggest problems with taxation is the sheer amount of money wasted on... collecting taxes. The way money

I never said the politicians were the sole blame for ruining public education. There's far too many to choose from (Creationists trying to turn science class into a Bible fight, teacher's unions, "Zero Tolerance" policies that punish the bullied, etc.) But politicians sure don't alleviate the problem at all. I guess this is part of the problem.Now, for an ironic twist, an analogy of how society is NOT a car! Our modern society is NOT like a car. When a car breaks down, you can check to make sure each part i

Even if your story is true, which I somehow doubt (as another poster pointed out, signal jammers don't cause you to not have the signal at all), it's something else that bothers me more deeply.

See, it's YOUR preseident. As far as I'm concerned, you can do whatever you wish to help keep him alive: turn off the cell-phone network completely, jam all radio signals imaginable, turn off the GPS, glue everybodies eyelids together, so that nobody can aim a sniper at him - I don't care. AS LONG AS YOU DO IT IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD. Sorry for shouting, but I'm somehow afraid otherwise you won't get it.

Traveling to OTHER countries and terrorizing OTHER people - who never elected Mr. Bush, moreover who very probably don't give a flying fuck about him - by forcing the local authorities to turn off the cell phone network respectively block the traffic along the route he is supposed to take, is what bothers me! He's not the first president of the USA to travel abroad, you know, but for reasons of overblown security measures interfering with other people's lives in very unpleasant ways, he's most probably the least wellcome one.

I just hope no locals will have to pay for this little trip of his with their lives because of not being able to dial an emergency number when neccessary.

He's not the first president of the USA to travel abroad, you know, but for reasons of overblown security measures interfering with other people's lives in very unpleasant ways, he's most probably the least wellcome one.

I think he's probably the least welcome US president because he's generally acknowledged around the world to be a complete knob. I doubt the extra security precautions have much to do with it.

For FM receivers, quieting and not RF signal strength is normally measured which is roughly analogous to demodulated signal to noise level or bit error rate. Using a non coherent jamming signal will lower any measured signal strength. You might notice that tuning an FM receiver to an empty channel returns large amounts of demodulated noise and an indication of zero signal strength.

For AM and SSB receivers, signal strength is taken from either the automatic gain control or directly from the signal level. A jamming signal will directly show up in the signal strength indicator just like it would with a spectrum analyser.

Cell phones of course using complex modulation encompassing both FM and AM could read signal strength in any number of ways. If I were designing a jamming system, I would rely on using a denial of service through the base stations with or without cooperation first, jamming the control frequencies second, and jamming the data channels third.

I am sure that this isn't the only countermeasure that they are taking. Its good to publish this one, though, so people know in advance their cell phones won't work. The other counter measures probably don't affect personal electronic devices in the same manner.

Yeah, I was going to say - why not use an AM radio to control the trigger? With a decent antenna and a few watts of power you could trigger the bomb from literally hundreds of miles away. The mobile phone jammers are going to be so far out of the passband they won't make a difference.

I'm mostly ignorant of the subject, but I believe cell phones are used as detonators by calling the phone, which then detonates the explosion. How would an AM radio be used for detonation purposes? If it's switched on, it's constantly getting signals. How would it know which signal was the instruction to spark the explosive?

the crudest method is to trigger when some threshhold is reached, and the detonator is just a powerful transmitter. a better, but somewhat more complex method would be to detect a particular tone over x time, such as 120hz for 1 second.

Well I shouldn't imagine there will be many people lining the route waving to him and throwing garlands of flowers ( apart from maybe members of the government waiting to lick his boots ) so it will just be the normal people going about there jobs which this will interfere with.I don't see why he should need all this security though, even if the worst does happen and someone blows him sky high it's not like he's even remotely irreplacable and someone else can take over his job a couple of hours later withou

You could say this would be a major coup for whatever terrorist organisation pulls it off but it wouldn't be if you didn't let it and just shrugged your shoulders "So, you killed the president. So what ? Someone else is doing his job now".

Bingo, you got it in one, that's exactly what our respnse should be to all terrorist attacks; over here we learned quickly that the best response to the IRA was to carry on about our bussiness, but just to remain a little more vigilant. Unfortuneately in the post 11/9/2001 world, our leaders seem to have forgotten that lesson, and instead are placing ever more draconaian and stupid "security meausures" in place to protect us from a vague threat that's extremely unlikely to affect 99% of the population even if the worst occoured. This is all the more puzzling as the provos (and now the dissidents) made Al Quiada look like amaturs.

I agree, this puzzles me too. I remember when the IRA were in full swing, every so often we'd see a bombing or something on the news, there were posters in swimming baths warning you about bombs and there was a lack of rubbish bins in stations and that was it. I don't remember us needing half the special measures we seem to require now despite the fact on their record alone the IRA were far far more of a threat to the UK than Al-Quaeda are or likely will ever be.

I am sure that this isn't the only countermeasure that they are taking. Its good to publish this one, though, so people know in advance their cell phones won't work. The other counter measures probably don't affect personal electronic devices in the same manner.

Well, most of the big terrorist acts in the late years involved people who bombed themselves together with the bomb.

To kill Bush, you'll find enough people ready to die for the chance to do it. If you don't care for your life, there are hundreds of w

If you are around US military helicopters much you quickly discover that our newer stuff is fairly stealthy.

Most of the heavy troop transports still sound like they do in movies about Vietnam, but the light ones and most of the attack helicopters are very quiet once they get up to speed. Presumably the one assigned to Bush will be flying high enough to keep the rotor wash from mussing his hair so I doubt the crowd will hear it at all.

It really is spooky to look over your shoulder and see an attack helicopter floating a couple hundred yards away when you had to idea it was even there.

What newer stuff? UH-60 Black Hawk and AH-64 Apache have been around since the early '80s. The Black Hawk is quieter than a Huey thanks to the four-blade main rotor and the Apache a little more so with the 55/125 offset tail rotor blades, but nothing in the Army inventory is really that new.The most quiet helo in the US Army inventory would probably be the A/MH-6, but that's only in the SOAR TO&E.

They typically wire the detonator in place of the vibrator motor in the phone. The motor is (relatively) large, the leads are fairly easy to access, the power source is continuous DC (unlike speakers, which is an analog signal), and it almost certainly is provided the most amperage of any other component in the phone. They then set the phone on vibrate, attach the explosives, and call the phone when they want it to detonate.

Obviously the digital communication required to uniquely address the ESN of the phone, do the proper handshaking, and inform the phone that there is an incoming call is quite complex. The odds of a jamming signal being mistaken for the exact trunk-side communication required to indicate a call is infinitesimally small.

They typically wire the detonator in place of the vibrator motor in the phone.

Typically? Where did you get the stats?:)

My phone provider sends me an SMS every now and then, and I get about one call a month by somebody who mistyped someone else's phone number. I wouldn't want to risk that while assembling or placing a bomb. The couple of cheap phones that I've owned don't have an option to switch the vibrator off for everything except calls from certain known phone numbers.

More information can be found here. [officer.com] Of course, if they had some idea of when the event was going to happen, they could also schedule an alarm for the latest time they want the device to detonate. So they detonate manually if possible, and it falls back on the alarm if the signal is blocked. The article I referenced discusses many factors, such as timers, jamming, the lithium ion battery itself being part of the ignition source, and why law enforcement doesn't have access to jamming equipment (including the FCC sections prohibiting jamming).

Ok, having dealt with the systems in question I'll explain a little how it works. Basically they hook one cell phone to the bomb via electronic leads soldered to the ringer or vibrating component of the phone which trip some mechanism inside to cause the bomb to go off. They are not usually set to the frequency since then any cell phone could set it off potentially. So they set it up to be keyed to a specific phone number in other words which gives them control of when the explosion will occur. The jamm

I regularly read articles about terrorists using cell phones to trigger bombs. The Thai government seems to be particularly worried about this; two years ago I blogged about a particularly bizarre movie-plot threat along these lines. And last year I blogged about the cell phone network being restricted after the Mumbai terrorist bombings.

On Schneier's blog today on this topic there was one smart commenter with an interesting idea. What the terrorists should do is still rig a phone up to a bomb that detonates a second after phone signal is lost. This way you can plant a bomb and you know you only need to blow up an area the size of a football field!

Isn't it wonderful that the terrorists have time to prepare now with so much warning? This is a movie plot threat straight out of James Bond. Security theatre at best.

On Schneier's blog today on this topic there was one smart commenter with an interesting idea. What the terrorists should do is still rig a phone up to a bomb that detonates a second after phone signal is lost. This way you can plant a bomb and you know you only need to blow up an area the size of a football field!

Isn't it wonderful that the terrorists have time to prepare now with so much warning? This is a movie plot threat straight out of James Bond. Security theatre at best.

It is conceivable that someone might be able to conceal a bomb along the motorcade route big enough to blow up Bush's limo as it passes by. A bomb big enough to blow it up while a football field length away should easily be detected by security when they pre-sweep the area along the route.

Security theater at its very best, folks... Only there may be an ulterior motive here. The Seattle WTO riots were co-ordinated via cellphone. Someone has taken the lesson to heart. Oh well, it's back to walkie-talkies for the concerned activists.

I agree, many people felt the restrictions imposed when he visited London, particularly those which kept the public away from him were driven more by the desire to keep anti-war/anti US policy protesters out of sight than any real security concerns. God forbid the propaganda machine be exposed to a divergent public opinion.

Yeah, the WTO was a huge riot.I'll tell you what. You tell me how much damage you would expect a 50,000 person RIOT to do in downtown seattle. Personally, I'm pretty sure if 50,000 people RIOTED, seattle would have been left a smoking ruin.

Then compare that to any accounts of real damage done. Pay attention to any pictures you find, make sure they aren't of the same few stores actually.

I think, if you aren't a fool, you'll realize that for a 50,000 protest, very, very little damage was done. The police

I hear this suggested periodically, and it's, simply put, a very poor idea, that's not been thought through at all.

There are a lot of us who DO really have to have cellphones and pagers active 24x7, who are also smart and polite enough to put them on vibrate only, and to leave the theater if we need to respond. And, no, I'm not just talking geeks. That includes members of the medical and law enforcement professions, as well, where receiving an unexpected page or call really may be critical, and yes (not trying to be melodramatic), might just save someone's life.

Stop thinking technology is the answer to what is a SOCIAL problem. Grow a spine, and hold people responsible for their actions and their effect upon others around them, rather than trying to hide behind a bad technological band aid.

The answer is NOT to restrict the use of technology for those who use it properly, but to throw the asshats who are disruptive out of the theater, regardless of whether or not they happen to have a phone, or a pager.

(God forbid that anyone should actually have any personal responsibility, or actually have to confront someone obnoxious.)

</rant>

We now return you to your regularly scheduled pithy remarks about the idiocy of using this technology to attempt to protect a man so (deservedly) loathed that they think something like this might actually be necessary. I, of course, refer to the continuing dissemination of FUD, not the jamming, per se.

There are other ways to detonate explosives remotely. Doesn't seem like the smartest thing to let potential enemies know of such plans in advance.

What makes you think this is the only countermeasures they are employing? Perhaps they just want to get the word out about why a helicopter is tailing the President and why people's cell phones seem to be losing signal in his powerful presence. That is, maybe they want to explain the obvious stuff in advance.

They practically wanted to take over London when he visited. US agents were to be armed and given ridiculous powers (the we can shoot who we want and are not to be held accountable was particularly amusing). The usual visiting dignatary events were ignored and large portions of the city were closed to the public if Bush was anywhere near.

The heavy handed approach is a really good way to make a very poor impression with the citizens of nation you are visiting.

US agents were to be armed and given ridiculous powers [..] large portions of the city were closed to the public

The same thing happened when he visited Vienna (Austria), my home town. Vienna is one of the safest cities in the world, but that day we heard the sound of helicopters non-stop, and there was a general uneasiness in the air, probably caused by the many radio and TV announcements. The US Secret Service took over the city, the airport, etc, and the local police were told to aid them and follow th

Exactly, why should ordinary people have these hassles foisted on them because someone else thinks they are special and requires ridiculous levels of security. If he wants to talk to anyone in Australia he can either use the phone or turn up like anyone else without the need for huge motorcades, helicopters and the like.I don't know how he travels about in the US but I'm sure that Sydney isn't inherently any more dangerous than Washington ( how many terrorist attacks have there been in Australia ? ) so if y

Seriously if can't move around outside a bubble like that then maybe you should think seriously of staying home. John Howard is one of your biggest friends. It's not like you're going to a Muslim Lesbian rally in Afghanistan or anything.

So much for mobile phone radio frequencies interfering with saftey-critical avionics! I guess milirtary helicopters don't have the most vulneable equipment (namely the credit card readers in seatback phones).

In other news: President stung to death by bees driven into a frenzy by mobile phone radiation... (Yes, yes I know the mobile phones affect bees thing has been debuinked).

I live in Sydney and I can see how the subj could appear trollish, but we've been given a one-off public holiday for this. I don't care what the fuck Bush or Howard or any of their cohorts do for just those 4 days. Howard has abolished the "Land of the Long Weekend" so lets make this a send off. As an added pinko idealistic nostalgia dream - how about us mere consu^H^H^H^H^H pions make it the start of an annual boycott from dronedom?

1. Build bomb2. Attach a mobile phone running windows mobile3. Attach triggering to a process which polls a website, if it can't reach the website it sets the timer to go off in 30 seconds.4. Jamming devices blocks cel signal..5. 30 second countdown to detonation activates, giving enough time for the motorcade to get closer.And letting people know about this ahead of time is the worst part... I'm not a huge fan of security through obscurity, but there's a difference between being obscure and telegraphing y

Is that an American football field or an Australian Rules football field?

Seriously, though, can't we just use yards or meters? I don't know about other countries, but here in the U.S. we spend more mental energy envisioning big rotating or end-to-end football fields around or next to things.

Bruce Schneier has already commented on this [schneier.com] and the effectiveness of such a measure. He's written about things like this before - it's interesting, once you start thinking about security related issues (especially if you read his blog, I guess:), you read an article like this and go "well, gee, I guess now The Evil Terrorists know this one particular method won't work, they can just cross it off their project plan for this particular event and focus on other more effective measures".

Also, hopefully noone has an actual emergency while this thing is going past. I'd hate for someone to have a heart attack or be trying to call in a fire or something and not be able to use their cell phone. Or dial for the police in case they see suspicious people near the motorcade. You know, like people with beards.

Unless your talking about a really big fing bomb (which these terrorist generally don't use and if they had wouldn't need cellphones etc to use) the blast range is a few feet at best. Meaning it will receive the jamming long before there is anything interesting to blow up.

"What I'm trying to get at, you can't stop anyone who wants to kill Bush, so maybe he should just give up and resign from the job."Wrong. You can't stop *everyone* who wants to kill bush, assuming infinite. It is child's play to stop one person - look for the guy with the big missile launcher and arrest him before he can get a lock. Stopping anyone is easy. Stopping everyone is the challenge.

Oh, and so far the secret service has a pretty good record. One presidential death since they have been guarding

thats a good point. who is responsible if a missed phone call means an accident victim doesnt make it?I think we would be better off in the US president just stays in the USA where he is safe and people love him.

Who, in his autobiography [amazon.com], admitted to lying to animal shelters so that he could adopt their cats, take them home, vivisect [nypress.com] and kill them. [wikipedia.org]

Of course, it's also possible that you're not thinking at all, that you're trying to use "Slashdot thinks Republican leaders would kill kittens" as some sort of slur against Slashdot, because you didn't know that until a few months ago Senate Republicans were in fact led by a man who killed kittens. For future irony, I suggest accusing the anti-Bush crowd of thinking tha